Over the weekend, I pottered up to Stratford for yet another expedition to the RSC. This excursion was a very gratefully received Christmas present from my boyfriend’s sister and it ended up being the most innovative stocking filler ever! (Thanks again Cat!)
The director, Polly Findlay, took her production in a completely different direction to any I've ever seen before, and possibly of any I think I'll likely ever see again. Her, as far as I'm aware, completely original interpretation of Antonio’s motivation for agreeing to the heavy terms of Shylock’s loan, was rooted in the gay love affair between the much younger Bassiano and Antonio. Bassiano’s marriage to Portia therefore became a kind of cover marriage. Making Portia’s later frustration with Bassiano having discovered he had given away her ring (albeit to her in disguise) even more relatable. Because disguised as the young but ingenious doctor, she had witnessed the aftermath of Antonio and Bassiano celebrating the success of defeating Shylock, by publicly kissing … a lot.
This approach is one I’d never considered, or even heard of before, but for me it makes complete sense in the context of the play. It had always seemed strange that Antonio had been willing to risk so much for a friend, but when the potential ‘win’ is a cover marriage so that they can carry on their love affair undisturbed, it seems a lot more comprehensible that Antonio accepted the terms of the loan. It might seem very unsympathetic to the original context of the play, you might assume that the Elizabethans were very conservative. There is a trend of assuming our ancestors, like the Victorians, were very conservative. This is not the case in either the Elizabethan or the Jacobean periods. Male love was for more accepted in these periods than in many other. This is largely due to the Renaissance, anything classically Greek or Roman was admired and emulated. Today one of those lesser discussed elements , was homo-erotica and male love. The mighty warrior Alexander the Great was a homosexual. And so for the Tudors homosexuality was not as shameful as it became for us in later centuries. We now know that there were many male courtiers in King James I’s court who were as queer as queer can be! King James I of England and VI of Scotland was widely rumoured to be homosexual.
So maybe Polly Findlay’s idea wasn't too far from the mark after all! Maybe we, and our conservative theatrical forefathers, have completely missed latent homosexuality as we have utterly wrongly assumed that Shakespeare was a prude. Any students of Shakespeare past GCSE level know just how bawdy Shakespeare was. Look at Hotspur in Henry IV and even Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet who thinks that if Romeo could just get his end away he’d get over Rosalind straight away… and he was right of course! The problem is we’ve allowed the Bowdlerisation(footnote) of Shakespeare to enter public consciousness. Shakespeare, like Chaucer hundreds of years beforehand, was filthy! He loved a cheap laugh. So maybe Antonio and Bassiano were meant to be camp stereotypes so that the audience could laugh at the witless Portia being cuckolded by the man who made her marriage possible … I’ll leave that up to you to decide.
The anti-semitic elements are not as prominent as in The Jew of Malta which I saw a few weeks beforehand and that I studied during my MA. I confess that I've not read The Merchant of Venice so I do not know if Findlay cut a lot of the anti-Semitic language. The beginning scenes contain the most anti-semitism with Shylock even being spat in the face. Jessica, Shylock’s daughter, is called an ‘infidel’ by her husband’s friends upon meeting them, but really the instances are few and far between in the play, however The Jew was full of references from beginning to end. Polly Findlay’s focus is not on Shylock and Jessica’s strained relationship, rather the audience’s attention is firmly on Portia and Bassiano’s relationship. This makes a real contrast from The Jew of Malta where it's on Barabas and his daughter Abigail.
Further surprises came in the style of the play. There were some very Brechtian elements such as the actors waiting just off stage to feature, and even a tableau where the costume change was done on stage as Portia and Nerissa adopted their male alter-egos. The costumes were modern dress but had an Elizabethan air about them, for example, long to mid-length full coats being worn by several of the male characters, but in very bright and even neon colours.
The set was also unusual. It felt like we were inside a giant Newton’s cradle; gently nodding to the typical ‘80s American Wall Street production.
Makram J. Khoury was a brilliant Shylock, with plenty of gravitas. Tim Samuels as Launcelot Gobbo, the fool, was hilarious and surprising! Nerissa was played by the disabled actress Nadia Albina, whose right arm finishes at the elbow. She kept her arm visible at all times not attempting to hide or disguise it at all. Something I admire deeply after she received negative reviews for being cast as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire last year
(http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/jun/02/disabled-actor-plays-blanche-dubois-streetcar-named-desire). Although she had one of the smallest parts in the play, she was active, engaging and captivating.
My final thought is that this was a truly innovative, breath of fresh air that really encapsulates the RSC’s objective to keep Shakespeare alive by making it relevant for us today.
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